Spectra Logic Announces the World’s Largest Data Storage Machine

BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 8, 2018 —Spectra Logic, a leader in delivering innovative and economical data storage solutions for the modern data center, announced the industry’s most advanced tape technology, the IBM TS1160, for use in Spectra’s enterprise-class tape libraries. Spectra’s TFinity ExaScale, T950, T950v and T380 Tape Libraries will support the new tape drive and media. When fully populated with the TS1160 tape drives and media, a TFinity ExaScale will store and allow access to more than 2 exabytes (2,000 petabytes) of data, making Spectra’s TFinity ExaScale Tape Library the largest single data storage machine in the world.

Providing a number of technological breakthroughs over the TS1155 drive, the remarkable TS1160 tape drive and media expands storage capacity to an unprecedented 20TB per cartridge (uncompressed), increases data throughput to 400 MB per second (uncompressed), and delivers twice the Fibre Channel interface speed at 16 Gigabit per second or up to 25 Gigabit per second Ethernet.

“As we go into our 40th year, Spectra once again is delivering another breakthrough in tape innovation for users with immense data storage needs,” said Spectra CEO Nathan Thompson. “To achieve this level of technological advancement, a new custom ASIC chip was developed by IBM; one that will be used in future generations of TS and LTO enterprise tape technologies, including LTO-9. Ongoing engineering feats such as these underscore the value and longevity of tape technology and validate Spectra’s commitment to offering best-in-class tape solutions that align with tape’s extensive roadmap.”

Benefiting Specta’s customers in government, scientific research, high performance computing, media and entertainment, and public cloud environments, the upcoming JE tape cartridge, which works with the TS1160 tape drive, is engineered with aligned Barium Ferrite (BaFe) particles that provide better signal-to-noise ratios, enabling an unmatched native storage capacity of 20TB per cartridge. In addition, the same advanced TMR (Tunneling Magneto-Resistive) head used to achieve higher capacities and speeds in the TS1155 and LTO-8 drives are being used for the TS1160 drive. Spectra’s new tape offerings are designed to read and write media formatted by the TS1155 and TS1150 drives and read tapes formatted by drives older than two generations.

“Tape is the most reliable and economical storage technology available to protect massive amounts of data,” said Fred Moore, president of Horison Information Strategies. “The tape industry continues to keep pace with published roadmaps and surpass other media types by leveraging technology innovations from the prior generation and designing new components for each subsequent generation.”

Spectra’s offering of the TS1160 tape drive for its TFinity library will be available in December 2018. *

*Spectra’s T950, T950v and T380 Tape Libraries will support the TS1160 tape drives and media in 2019.